My bicycle tracks mapped with Google Fusion Tables (for 2013)

My bicycle tracks for 2013 (a few of them are not bicycle).

2013

Sunday october 13th 2013 at Osowa-Rondo

Bunch cycling from Osowa-Rondo to Banino...

Trip to Żarnowiec

Last Sunday I travelled by train to Wejherowo and the trip started here. There is a railway service in Trójmiasto similar to German S-Bahn or metro-like railway but not underground. The ticket fare (Sopot-Wejherowo) is less than 2 EUR and the ticket for bicycle is free.

From Wejherowo I cycled along 218 road toward Krokowa but halfway turned left to Tyłowo. I proceeded along Żarnowieckie lake via Kartoszyno and Lubkowo to Żarnowiec. In Kartoszyno a nuclear power plant was planned to be build but the project was abandoned. There are remains of the buildings of the plant erected (not particularly interesting in my opinion and the access to them is forbidden). Lubkowo and the nearby area on Żarnowieckie lake shore is a resort. There are hundreds of vacation homes built here---so many that an access to lake's shore is seriously limited:-( There is an old cisterian cloister and a church in Żarnowiec.

From Żarnowiec I proceeded along 213 road via Krokowa (There is a von Krokow family castle here but I did not visit it.) to Celbowo. BTW in a small village Zdrada one can turn to Mechowo to see Caves in Mechowo---a geological curiosity. Next I cycled a few kilometers along 216 road. In weekends usually there is a heavy traffic here as many people are trying to get to/from popular beach resorts Władysławowo, Jastarnia etc...

Finally I turned left to local road heading to Żelistrzewo (Don't try to pronounce this name :-) and approached Gdynia from the west, cycling via Mrzezino and Pierwoszyno. Again in weekends some clever people are trying to avoid traffic on 216 road and drive to Gdynia this way. Off season and during week days the roads here are rather empty...

The weather was fine, the traffic on the average was light. The road quality was fine as well without potholes etc... The total distance covered was 110 kms.

A KML track (with photos) is here:

Larger map

Road race in Gdynia

Large map

A road bicycle race was organized in Gdynia last Sunday. There were two races: one for UCI Elite licensees and one open ie no UCI license was required. The first race were attended by top Polish road cycling teams (with CCC Polsat Polkowice as the strongest and well known) and two Poles from OmegaPharma: Michał Gołaś and Michał Kwiatkowski. Gołaś and Kwiatkowski dominated the race: they broke away 80 kilometers from the finish line and the peleton was unable to catch them. Gołaś won the race BTW.

350 amateur riders with different skill levels took part in the other race. The winner was Baltazar Brukalski while Piotr Wadecki---once one of Polish most successful cyclists took the 2nd place (he won M40 category). The last rider achieved the finish line 2 and a half hour after the winner. BTW there was a limit of 25 kmph to be classified but finally it seems not to be enforced. The distance was 130 kms---pretty much as the route was hilly.

There are plans to held the race annually. Look here if you are interested (unfortunately the site is only in Polish)

My love for Campagnolo faded out

As a dedicated fan of Campagnolo I was really disappointed to realize that removing Power Torque cranks can be a real problem. I see no point of designing two incompatibly cranks but to get extra money from the customers.

If one has to deinstall PT cranks one has to use a tool which is ridiculously expensive (100--150 EUR). The bike shop which services my bike refused to buy it and I do not blame them. They service three Campagnolo bikes (two of them Ultra Torque).

Fortunately for me they managed to get a tool using their contacts with CCC cycling team. (BTW CCC do not ride Campagnolo any more but they did in the past).

The tool in question is depicted below (it is the cheapest tool as far as I know):

The tool is so uncomplicated that it seems not particularly difficult to make a homemade copy. That's why Campagnolo do not sell it on their own?

Garmin Edge 705

I have bought Garmin Edge 705. An used one for circa 150 EUR. Today I compared Edge logging quality with Garmin Legend HCx. My test inidicates Edge is as good as Legend if not better. That's nice

On the map below Edge's track is marked red while Legend's one is blue:

Pokaż Edge vs Legend na większej mapie

Trip to Bachotek and back

May 1st is a public holiday in Poland and May 3rd is another one. There is a lot of free time at the beginning of May and Polish TeX User's Group (of which I am proud member) traditionally organizes an annual meeting then in Bachotek resort.

Bachotek is circa 200 kms from Sopot where I live. I was able to get there by bicycle when I was younger. Now I travelled by train to Twarda Góra (Gdynia--Bydgoszcz railway route) first and from there by bicycle via Nowe, Grudziądz and Radzyń Chełmiński to Bachotek.

Return trip was along almost the same route, but I cycled to Warlubie---next station from Twarda Góra towards Bydgoszcz at Gdynia--Bydgoszcz railway route.

Interesting places to visit include:

Nowe

small old town (cf. market)

Grudziądz

old town (cf. wassertor + impressive truss bridge build in 1879 (cf. bridge's photo). It is second oldest Vistula bridge.

Radzyń Chełmiński

ruins of Teutonic Order castle

A GPX tracks: T.Góra-Bachotek| Bachotek-Warlubie.

Second time at Osowa-Rondo in 2013

This Sunday 25+ riders attended a meeting at Osowa. A really big swarm of cyclists. Unfortunately I was able to keep the pace only for the first kilometers.

Video geocoding with gpsbabel

Contour camera

Crossing at Osowa

The winter was so hard and long that only yesterday I went to Osowa-roundabout on a road bike. We rode straight to Szemud (and back.) The weather was sunny but chilly.

There is an easy way to augment video files with GPS data using GPSbabel. Since version 1.4 of GPSBabel is able to create a subtitle file from a GPS tracklog. The subtitle contains latitude/longitude/altitude as well as the time. With a simple Perl scripts I have added current speed (not particularly accurate however).

To convert GPX file to subtitles one have to execute:

gpsbabel -i gpx -f FILE.gpx -o subrip,video_time=hhmmss,gps_time=hhmmss,gps_date=YYYYMMDD -F FILE.srt

Where: video_time -- video position (relative to beginning of video) for which exact corresponding GPS timestamp is known. gps_time -- the time part of the GPS timestamp which corresponds to a known position in the video. gps_date -- the date part of the GPS timestamp which corresponds to a known position in the video.

On the first video (see below) you can see that in 34 second I passed the zebra crossing. The zebra's crossing coordinates can be easily identified at Google Maps (cf. picture Crossing at Osowa). Now one have to search the GPX track for the point which is nearest to 54.429591/18.477973. I developed a simple Perl script for that purpose:

$ perl My_GPX_nearest_timestamp.pl -c 54.429591:18.477973 20130420.gpx
*** USAGE: My_GPX_nearest_timestamp.pl -c latitude:longitude GPX-file
*** Looking for 20 points near: 54.429591:18.477973 (lat/lon) ***
> 15.3758195746663 2013-04-20T10:27:09Z  54.429509640:18.477780819
> 22.0617273294607 2013-04-20T09:05:15Z  54.429701502:18.478256240
> 32.6458959467509 2013-04-20T10:27:15Z  54.429787332:18.478348190
> 43.3771684316959 2013-04-20T09:05:24Z  54.429531014:18.477310427
> 47.7727043140018 2013-04-20T09:05:11Z  54.429905936:18.478475260
> 63.903936892351 2013-04-20T10:27:00Z  54.429627573:18.476987137
> 70.171200323179 2013-04-20T09:05:28Z  54.429655485:18.476893930

One can stipulate from the above output that I passed a point 15,4 meters away from 54.429591/18.477973 at 10:27:09 GMT as well as I passed another point which is 22 meters away from 54.429591/18.477973 at 09:05:15. As I cycled back and forth along the same route the second point is valid, the first is accidentally closer but as the time is almost one and half hours later it is clear that I was there on returning home. So gpsbabel should be executed as follows (20130420.gpx contains GPX track):

gpsbabel -i gpx -f 20130420.gpx -o subrip,video_time=000034,gps_time=090515,gps_date=20130420 -F 20130420_1.srt

Speed is added with another very simple Perl script:

perl add_speed_2_srt.pl 20130420_1.srt > 20130420_1_S.srt

Just to remind: internally all GPS units record time/date using Coordinated Universal Time aka Greenwich Mean Time vel Zulu time (for army enthusiasts). What the unit displays is another matter (usually it displays local time).

Part two of the ride is here.

Map of 3City roads

Bigger map

I have found really impressive road map of tree city and tree city area prepared by some anonymous cycling enthusiast. The map is enriched with photographs and short notes concerning road surface types and traffic (unfortunately in Polish). Very useful for cyclists visiting 3City---other maps do not contain information on traffic/surface.

Roads marked with green and blue denotes paved roads, marked with red denotes paved road as well but with high traffic. Yellow denotes unpaved surface. Orange and pink denotes paved road but not particularly suitable for cycling (cobblestones, concrete road slabs etc)

Wunderground's weather sticker added to my blog

The weather station that I've been using since March 2011 is Termometerfabriken Viking 02049--a clone of Fine Offset Electronics WH 2080. The station is connected via USB cable to my tiny Sheevaplug server and the software used is pywws. Yesterday I added my station to the pool of Wunderground's Personal Weather Stations (see Wunderground's weather sticker added to the right panel of this page). It have appeared to be pretty simple: one have to register to wunderground.com. Next one have to register his/her Personal Weather Stations. On pressing Submit button station ID is returned.

Now one have to change the configuration of pywws. I am using an old version of pywws (11.02 namely)---the exact details can be different when one is using newer versions.

In the configuration file weather.ini:

[hourly]
last update = 2013-01-07 08:09:00
plot = []
text = []
twitter = []
underground = False

change False to True

Add password and station ID to [underground] section of configuration file:

[underground]
station = IPOMORSK8
password = #######

To check if everything is OK run the command:

python  pywws/pywws/ToUnderground.py -v ~/data/weather

The above should upload some data to wunderground.com.

It is hard to find IPOMORSK8 at wunderground.com because it is not directly accessible from user's account. I have found my station only thanks to WunderSearch. Looking at nearby stations list is useless as well because It takes approximately 24 hours for our database to update all of our web servers and place your station on your local forecast page.

Lime green Hüdz replacements hoods

I have bought Hüdz replacements hoods for my Campagnolo Ergopowers. I insist on lime (Milano Lime) ones and thus have some problems to get them. There are in stock at Wiggle but Available to order, stock expected Mid January 2013 and the delivery costs are high as it is 14 GBP for an 19 GBP item.

I have found a cheaper seller at Ebay, namely mojo-cycles. Not only the hoods arrived within a week (very fast) but the seller refunded 8 dollars for excessive delivery costs! In result, I paid ca 18 GBP for the item and delivery.

Mojo-cycles appeared to be an excellent seller.

First time at Osowa-Rondo in 2013

The weather was fine: dry and the temperature a few degrees over zero (Celsius scale:-). It was a pity only a few riders were present.